


Present Tense

by wrennette



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Canon Typical Swearing, Friends to Lovers, M/M, PTSD, after action, archiving old words, but some violence, rated mostly for swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4791719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrennette/pseuds/wrennette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is already too late for Doc Bryan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present Tense

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving from LJ. Originally posted in 2009. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Based on characters in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, which is the property of HBO, Evan Wright, and probably some other people. No profit is made by the author, and no offense or copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Original AN: For some reason, the theme song to this is Sincerely Me by New Found Glory. I don't know either. Thanks to shoshannagold for some hand holding when I started this. I'm still not sure I remember how to write fiction, but it's a start.

Navy Hospitalman Robert Timothy Bryan holds himself aloof from the Marines he serves with.

Navy Hospitalman Robert Timothy Bryan knows better than to let himself care too much about his Marines, because they are the walking dead the moment they step into the theatre of war.

It is already too late for Doc Bryan.

\- - -

Nate keeps track of his former men. It's as easy as a phone call to Mike, and he knew that Doc would be in Philadelphia before Doc did, because he wrote the man's letter of recommendation for medical school. He's pushed and pulled and encouraged Doc, and Doc usually gives him that same flat, vaguely angry look he gives everyone. 

Every so often though, the fire in Doc's eyes changes temperature, from the burn of anger to the warmth of regard, and that always makes Nate smile, just a little bit.

\- - -

It's more than a good half day train ride between Boston and Philadelphia.

\- - -

Nate loves the feel of the track clattering off the miles between Cambridge and Philadelphia. The gentle sway of the train lulls him to a soft, peaceful sort of dreaming that isn't quite sleep. He yawns to a slightly more wakeful state twenty minutes north of Philadelphia, and by the time they pull up to the platform he's alert and upright, tongue flicking over his lips.

\- - -

He goes by Robert at school now, but when people call Doc across the crowded rooms of the teaching hospital, he still looks up, reaching for a gun he no longer carries.

\- - -

Doc looks the same as ever from a distance when Nate sees him. It's vaguely disorienting, because all of a sudden the air seems hot and dry and gritty and the shuffle of Philadelphians seems somewhat ominous. The mirage of desert camo fades from Nate's tired eyes, and he sees the snap in Doc's eyes from across the room as he's recognized. They cut towards one another like dogfish through a shoal of sardine, and Nate feels his face pull into a smile. 

Nate walks with a slight compensation for the weight of a rifle on his right hand side. Most people wouldn't notice.

\- - -

Some men do not like it when other men touch them. They shy away from physical contact, even the incidental. Those men do not become Marines. If those men do become Marines, they soon understand that the solid presence of another man is as great a comfort as the sound of their mothers voices.

\- - -

He grabs Nate about the shoulders as if to make sure he is real. He thumps his arms across Nate's back as if to make sure he is there. He does not believe his eyes until he feels the answering slap of Nate's hands against his shoulder blades.

\- - -

Nate has regained the weight that the desert melted from his frame. He is still lean all this time later, hasn't gone civilian soft a full tour of duty and then some for Doc. He smiles more easily though, that full bright smile none of them could quite believe in Muwaffaqiya or Al Hayy. It still seems too wide, too bright, in the golden moted light of Union Station Philadelphia, with the press of humanity swirling around them. He gives a smile back in reply, less a real expression of joy or even contentment than a lessening of the constant anger in his tense face. Nate's smile manages to get wider.

\- - -

Doc's apartment can most generously be described as spartan. There is a couch and a TV on a table, a pile of medical textbooks stacked near the door. There is one bedroom and one bed. The bed is not big enough for one man, let alone two, and even if it was, Doc wouldn't have offered. Instead he silently directs Nate to the couch with a jerk of his chin, grabbing his duffel and dropping it just inside the doorway to the bedroom. The stack of books wobbles slightly. 

The kitchen is just a galley, there is a single plate, a single cup, and a handful of cutlery drying on the rack. There is no carpet and the fluorescent light bulbs promise to cast a stark cool glow like that in an operating room.

The three days Nate is in Philadelphia listening to people talk about shit they don't really understand, he barely sees Doc. When he gets up the first morning, Doc is wearing PT gear. Nate changes quickly and they jog together, a longer circuit than Nate is used to anymore. He half expects Rudy to blow by wearing his chicken suit and a pack stuffed full of rocks. They jog every morning and when Nate returns each night, he nods at Doc through the doorway of the bedroom where Doc sits studying in the cold impersonal light. Doc brings him back to the station when the conference is over, and Nate goes back to Boston after extending an offer of hospitality he knows Doc will never take him up on.

The next time he's on the Acela to Baltimore, he decides at Trenton New Jersey to get off in Philadelphia. He calls his mother as he flags down a cab, and has no good excuse for her. He'll be in Baltimore when he gets to Baltimore.

\- - -

He's not expecting anyone. His eyes slide to the drawer where his K-BAR sits gathering dust, and he opens the door empty handed. Nate looks utterly lost in a way he's never seen before, so he does the polite thing and steps back to let Nate enter before telling him how fucked up his shit is. 

\- - -

There is no good reason for him to be standing in front of Doc's door shifting his weight like a nervous teenaged girl. There is no bad reason either. It is a completely unreasonable thing, that he is in Philadelphia, not on his way to Baltimore, shifting his weight left-right-left-right and staring at the door like it might bite his hand if he just reached out and knocked. He's being stupid and he knows it, and he knows that even if he didn't know it, Doc would be perfectly happy to tell him. He knocks. No one has told him exactly how stupid he is since he got back to Cambridge.

\- - -

Nate is grinning broadly before he gets even halfway started into how ass-fuckingly stupid Nate is, and it takes the wind out of his sails.

\- - -

He stays for a week, and sees only slightly more of Doc than he did the last time he visited. During the day he goes to the art museum and the zoo and the Liberty Bell plaza. They go out to dinner twice, Doc cooks twice, and Nate finds a grocery store and cooks twice. Then he gets back on the train and goes to see his parents, stays in Baltimore one week rather than the two that had originally been agreed upon. His mother tries once to get him to clarify why he felt the need to take a week long detour to Philadelphia, but he really doesn't have a reason other than it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sometimes, he wonders if the Corps forgot to return his brain when he turned in his kit.

\- - -

When Nate graduates, his parents throw him a big party. They invite everyone Nate has ever met, and a good number of the Marines show up. Doc doesn't.

\- - -

D.C. is practically home compared to Cambridge and before that California. Except he doesn't really know anyone there, and people make the assumption that since he was a Marine, he supports the war and the President. He tried explaining it all of once, and then decided it was safer all around if he just let people assume that. There's less chance he'll give himself an aneurysm this way. His real friends and his new co-workers know where he stands, and he has to believe that's enough. He doesn't have a lot of belief left after Iraq though. 

\- - -

There are carefully labeled boxes littering the broad sunny floor as he reaches up to knock, kitchen, bedroom, books. Nate looks up before his hand meets wood, welcomes him in with a smile and a wave. 

"Heard you might need a hand," he offers, then puts the case of beer he brought on the floor and nudges it across with his foot.

Unpacking a bachelor apartment doesn't really take that long. But doing something outside of his normal feels nice. There's something vaguely surreal about refolding Nate's worn out towels when this time yesterday he was elbow deep in blood, trying to stop the hemorrhaging of a fourteen year old wannabe gang banger and having mind numbing flashbacks of a younger boy pierced by higher calibre bullets. The repetition of unwrapping and rinsing glasses and alphabetizing books by author's last name means his mind can wander a bit, and also that he can keep it from wandering too far.

They demolish half the case of beer over the course of the day, and when they finish the apartment looks nice, if un-lived-in. Nate's cable isn't hooked up yet, but the view up to D.C. from his fire escape is pretty fantastic, and so they sit and let the early summer breeze cool the last of the sweat off their arms and watch the lights come up in the distance. Nate muses that it doesn't look that different than Baghdad did from the hill overlooking the amusement park, minus the explosions and AK fire. Doc snorts softly in disbelief, and the silence stretches through a few more beers before he hears himself talking about the tour he did after Nate got out, about how fast the shit rolled downhill without Nate there to deflect it. 

He's not blaming Nate, not trying to make him feel guilty. But it's the only way he can figure to tell Nate what an amazing fucking officer he was. Doc talks for over an hour, until his voice is rough. There's too much emotion wrapped around his throat, and even before he goes hoarse, Nate can hear how it's choking him. 

They finish the case of beer.

\- - -

Three weeks after he's moved in, he's still having nightmares about Doc getting killed by the incompetence of his superiors. He's had all sorts of nightmares about the guys he's served with, the things he's seen and done. None of them kept coming back with this sort of vengeance. It's a good thing he's retained some amount of ability to function on little to no sleep, because after a while it seems like every time he closes his eyes, he's seeing Doc with a startled open look on his face and the only color anywhere is the too red blood that stains Doc's teeth. He'd ask Mike if it was really that bad, but he's pretty sure that: 

> 1) He doesn't really want to know  
>  2) Doc had been with a different group of guys when he went back, and while his guys might have heard, they wouldn't really know.

Four weeks after he's moved in, he gets on a train to Philadelphia.

\- - -

The steps on the landing are familiar, and the rap on the door is businesslike. He opens it, and Nate shoves him into the apartment and kisses him before Doc can tell him how stupid he is. 

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Nate breathes against his mouth when he pulls away, leaving Doc standing awkward and confused in the middle of the room. Unsure what else to do, how else to deal, Doc grabs a bottle of whiskey and a pair of glasses. Nate takes the glass, slugs it back, then takes the bottle and pulls a long draw. Doc stares at the motion of Nate's throat, then throws back his own whiskey, and proceeds to steal back the bottle before Nate can demolish it completely. They get drunk, and Nate passes out on the sofa. 

In the afternoon, when he can open his eyes without wanting to tear them out of his head, Doc goes into the kitchen and makes them a full dozen scrambled eggs, toast and bacon. He hears Nate retching piteously as he divides the food, and they don't talk until after they eat. Nate quietly volunteers to do the dishes, and the next morning, goes back to Washington. 

\- - -

For three weeks after Nate returns to Washington, they don't talk to one another. This is in no way unusual. They often go for months without talking directly to one another. But Doc's never thought this constantly about one person without reaching any sort of conclusion. By the second week, Doc's very casual girlfriend has decided he isn't paying enough attention to her, and he is slipping into gay clubs in the metro Philly area, doing recon. He gets hit on by his share of guys as he sits at the various bars, watching people pair up and unpair. None of them are attractive to him. He doesn't want to kiss any of them. But he can't stop thinking about the brush of Nate's lips against his. He can't stop wondering what a real kiss from Nate would feel like. He tries kissing a guy who sort-of-not-really looks like Nate, at least in the mouth. It's bland and boring, and he leaves the bar alone again not long after.

Finally he sits down, calls the Gunny, because Mike Wynn is one of the few people he trusts, is sort of like the den mom for their entire fucked up band of retards. He doesn't specifically mention Nate. Doesn't really talk about the fact that the person who kissed him, who he's feeling so ambivalent about, is a man. Gunny knows anyway, tells him to just go fucking talk to Nate already and stop acting like a junior high girl with a crush. He hangs up in a huff, refuses to think about the advice for at least another week. Two weeks later, there are familiar steps on his landing.

He opens the door, and Nate looks like hell. He opens his mouth to tell Nate how many types of an idiot he is, but Nate leans up and kisses him. It shuts him up even faster than Nate's wide grin did those months ago. It isn't very good, neither of them really know what the fuck they're doing, but at the moment, it's the comfort and reassurance he needs. He closes the door, sits Nate down, and gets them some beer. They each drink a bottle, stealing sly little looks at one another, trying to figure one another and themselves out. Doc is the one that leans in this time.

\- - -

He calls Doc at least once a week, just to share how mind numbingly stupid civilians are with someone who will understand. Every so often, he'll get to his apartment and Doc will be sitting on his landing with a case of beer, a knit skull cap or crisply creased bandana pulled snug over his still military short hair. They watch sports and bad late night music videos and C-SPAN, and occasionally their hands find one another in the dimness and latch together, just to reassure themselves that they aren't alone. When he comes to Washington, Doc sleeps on the sofa, and Nate kisses him goodnight chastely, because they still haven't a fucking clue what this is.

\- - -

Nate's in Philadelphia when he gets word that one of the Infantry Marines he did his first tour with has been killed in Iraq, an IED blowing out his HM-V. The funeral will be in a week and a half at Arlington, and of course Nate will be there, of course. 

He sits very still when he's hung up the phone.

He's so still Doc isn't quite certain what to do. 

Carefully Doc sits next to Nate, slips an arm around his waist. This isn't really something they've done before, isn't something they know how to navigate together. Nate holds himself still and aloof.

\- - -

When Nate comes home from the funeral of Corporal Jose Morales, Doc is sitting on his landing with two bottles of whiskey. "I took the liberty of calling your office, telling them you'd be out tomorrow," Doc says into the stillness, and Nate is wary as a feral cat, pale eyes flicking about as if expecting danger from any angle. Doc hasn't seen him so keyed up in years, and so he stands slowly, gathers the alcohol, and comes down to Nate, gently herds him up to the landing and then frisks him for his apartment keys. 

"It's been over a year since I had to bury one of my guys," Nate finally says a couple glasses of whiskey later. His voice is rough with the burn of alcohol and the weight of his emotion. "I let myself think -" he pauses, takes another slug of whiskey, "I let myself think we were on the upswing. I let myself think I might not have to watch an more funerals." 

After pacing a while longer, Nate sits on the couch with Doc. Close, but not quite close enough their bodies touch. He drinks another whiskey, then slowly sidles up to Doc, leans his head on the Corpsman's shoulder. Tentatively Doc loops his arm around Nate's waist, and this time Nate sighs and settles into it, pressing his face against the swell of Doc's chest. All Doc can think is that he doesn't know how to fix this.

\- - -

Doc wakes too hot, his mouth dry and his body slick with sweat. He's pressed against Nate, and despite all their kissing, he has never before connected the ephemeral idea or the solid reality of the other man with the feeling of arousal. But he's hard, and perhaps still slightly drunk. The best option struggles to the top of his fogged mind. He tangles their legs together a bit more, pressing his hips against Nate's ass, then sighs more or less contentedly and passes back out.

He wakes again to the sound of Nate brushing his teeth, and he rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling for a while. It's a nice ceiling. Boring, but nice.

\- - -

"You know," Nate says the next time he's in Philadelphia, absently twirling a noodle around his chopsticks, "I think I might love you a little." Doc looks up, shrugs, and steals the last piece of shrimp out of Nate's carton.

When Doc stands from the sofa to go to bed, he pulls Nate with him. They kiss slow and exploratory in the door way, then strip to their shorts and curl together on the too small bed. They kiss again, a bit wetter, a bit deeper, and Nate rocks his hips gently against Doc's, just enough for Doc to feel that he's half hard. Doc shifts, keeping a firm arm around Nate's waist to prevent him rolling off the bed, and then he's on top of Nate, his thigh pressing between Nate's legs, and he rolls his hips down experimentally. Nate lets out a low, almost unwilling groan, reaching up to pull Doc back down for a decidedly filthy kiss. Doc groans into it, arousal blooming in his gut.

"Nate," he breathes when they part, voice soft with discovery, and Nate grins that stupid broad grin, then pulls him into a rib crushing hug.

"You could just say you love me too."


End file.
